Survival Mode
by Reavera
Summary: The story of Nora. In her time, she was the perfect daughter, mother, and housewife. Now she's forced to face the horrors of the Commonwealth, learn how to survive, and find the courage within herself to do what's necessary if she has any hope of finding her son. Unsure of future pairings. Taking this as it comes. Rating may change in future chapters.
1. Cold, But Not Dead

Disclaimer: I'll say this once. I. Do. Not. Own. Fallout.

Author's Note: I just started writing this story this morning. Literally, just started writing. No real direction. No plan. Not sure where this story is going. But I've been considering the character of 'Nora'. Military wife. Mother. Went to law school, but hasn't actually practiced law. (Nate did say "You'll shake the dust off your law degree". So I'm assuming being a wife and mother got in the way of her actually practicing law.) The whole time I'm playing as her, I'm thinking in my head, yeah, I'm a badass, but seriously, how far would this woman make it in the wasteland. She'd the equivalent of a 1950s housewife. Best case scenario, she's only ever shot a gun in practice, and maybe only a few times. Her husband would survive this place no problem, but _her_? Anyway, so I'm writing her story. If you like it review if you want to. And don't worry. This isn't going to be a reprise of the game. I'm just starting off in the vault because it felt natural.

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Chapter One

Cold, But Not Dead

* * *

Cold. It was so cold. She felt like she couldn't breathe, and she lay gasping on the metal floor beside her husband's body for what could have been hours. She couldn't stop the tears. He was dead. She had seen it with her own eyes; she'd felt for a pulse and found nothing, so she'd pulled him out of the pod and attempted CPR, but it was too late. He was gone. But she couldn't process it in words yet. In fact, it seemed like a long time before she managed coherent thought at all. When she finally did, the bossy voice inside her head that had gotten her through college, law school, child birth, and even the dropping of a nuclear bomb took over. _Up_ , it commanded, _you have to get up!_ She didn't want to do it. This horrible pain had claimed her, and she didn't want to resist. She didn't think she could face a life without Nathan, but the voice was right. She _had_ to get up. Because she had to find Shaun.

Shivering, and still coughing, she forced herself to her feet. One last time, she looked down at her husband, promising him that she'd find whoever did this, that she'd find their baby. Sniffling, she slipped his wedding ring off his finger and clutched it to her heart, then forced herself to turn away.

"Shaun," she whispered, her throat raw. "My baby."

 _Where is my baby?_

Stumbling and coughing, she wandered around the vault, looking into the other pods, looking for anyone who might know what happened, but all she found were corpses and skeletons.

"Is anyone here?" she called out desperately. "Hello?"

The only answer was her voice echoing through the halls.

Eventually she found my way to the Overseers office, where she found his terminal and discovered the horrible truth. They were an experiment. And as for these bones… these people had killed each other. Some trying to get out. Others, knowing that would mean instant death, fighting to keep everyone in. Shivering, she started to scour the room. She found a few stimpacks, and some food, but there were no pockets in her vault suit, nothing to carry them in. Scouring the other rooms, she found an army-green duffel bag and filled it with what supplies she could find. She'd seen that bomb go off. She knew there couldn't be much left above ground. She'd have to make these supplies last.

The only thing she hesitated over was the gun. A 10mm pistol was laying casually on the ledge of the Overseers desk. She'd only ever shot one a handful of times. Nate had insisted she learn, but what proper housewife walked around with a gun in her purse? Now she wished she'd learned more, that she hadn't stopped the lessons once Nate was confident she had the basics. In truth, she was tempted to leave it there, but her fear of the unknown made up her mind for her. Who knew what she'd find beyond that door? _That_ _man_ had had a gun. He'd killed Nate with it when he'd tried to stop them from taking Shaun. What if he was outside, waiting for her to come out?

Cringing away from the cold metal, she wrapped her fingers around the grip and pulled with duffel bag over her shoulder with her free hand.

It was a good thing she'd followed her instincts. She had barely left the Overseers office before she was confronted by the most enormous, hideous, terrifying cockroaches she'd ever seen in her life; they were fat and brown and over a foot long. They'd been crawling benignly along the walls when she saw them, but at the sound of her shrill scream, they'd fluttered down onto the floor and came charging in her direction.

Panicking, she quickly retreated, backing away and practically stumbling over her own feet as she fired the gun indiscriminately in their direction. Afterward, she was sure more bullets had hit the walls and the floor than the roaches themselves, and the noise had been deafening, but she succeeded in killing them all with only one minor scratch on her wrist. It stung, but her heart was racing so fast that she barely noticed. _Giant roaches?_ Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that it wasn't so bad. Bugs had been a part of life before the war, and if they were still around, surely that was a good sign, even if the were a little… different.

Bolstering up her courage, she pressed on, finding a handful more roaches in the next room. She was more careful this time. Her ears seemed more sensitive than usual in the silence of the vault, and now that she was paying attention, she found she could hear them long before she saw them. Taking a deep breath, she tried to remember the few things she had learned about properly firing a weapon, and she wasted considerably less bullets in the next few rooms.

Finally, she found the entrance. Apparently, someone had made it this far trying to get out. Two skeletons lay on the floor next to the console that would open the door, but she guess they'd killed each other in the ensuing altercation. Or maybe they'd been shot from behind in their attempt to escape. She would never know. But one of them lay next to a Pip-Boy 3000. Setting the pistol down on the console, she hesitantly picked it up, letting the wrist bones fall from it as she examined it. With relief, she realized it was a Mark IV; she didn't fancy having the thing biometrically sealed to her arm. Snapping it around her wrist, she locked the latch and it immediately started to boot up. She dusted off the screen while she waited, and the first thing displayed was a miniature, slightly cartoonish model of herself, showing the condition of her body down to her muscles, organs, and bones. It even noted the scratch on her wrist.

She'd examine it more later. For now, she wanted to get out of here. She linked the pip-boy to the console, and the casing protecting the door control popped open. She slammed her fist down on the button, and was overwhelmed by the blaring alarms that echoed around the room. Covering her ears, she watched with relief as the door opened. It seemed like only minutes had passed since she'd watched it close behind her, but the bones scattered on the floor around her told a different story. But it didn't matter. None of it did. The only thing that mattered anymore was finding her son.

"Shaun," she whispered as the elevator lifted her toward the surface. "I'm coming, sweetheart."


	2. Picking Up the Pieces

Author's Note: A short chapter. But I wanted to include it. And I wanted the next part to be separate.

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Chapter Two

Picking Up the Pieces

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Her house… her home. It's almost unrecognizable. As though in a daze, she walked through the shell of what had one been her family's loving home. Though it is still standing, most of the walls were apparently ripped open by the blast of the bomb, and fell apart over time. Rubble litters the floors. The glass windows are long gone. She flips the light switch, but of course there's no power. The fridge is busted in. The dining room chairs are all turned over. Only one isn't completely broken. By some miracle the television set is still in one piece, but of course there's no way to see if it works without any power. And she doubted there would be any programs still running. The furniture in the family room is still intact, but it's so dirty she doesn't dare sit on it. Instead she trails her hand along a dusty shelf where their family photos, set in handsome and polished frames, had once stood. She supposed it would have been too much to expect those to survive the past two-hundred years.

 _Two-hundred years?_

It just wasn't possible. She could barely imagine it. At twenty-six years old, that was the sum of her entire life eight times over. But to her, it was as though none of that time actually existed. It seemed like mere hours had passed since her home and her family had been happy and whole. How could so much time have elapsed with her completely unaware? She knew enough about history to know that a lot could happen in two hundred years. What kind of world had she found herself in? The idea frightened her more than a little. Her only experience with this world so far was that a man had come into the vault, shot her husband, and stolen her baby. What kind of man did something like that? What kind of world allowed that kind of behavior? Taking a deep breath, she tried to remind herself that that might not be the norm. After all, there had been criminals before the war, hadn't there?

She was vaguely aware of Codsworth watching her progress throughout the house; it had been with a sense of relief that she'd found him, still trimming the hedges surrounding their home as though nothing had happened. It made her feel that maybe not _everything_ had changed. But as she swept through her house, she knew that just wasn't true.

With her heart trembling inside her, she made her way back to the bedrooms. The first thing to draw her gaze was Shaun's crib, still bright blue and sitting in the middle of his room as though waiting for her to place him safely inside it. It brought a lump to her throat, and she quickly looked away. She wasn't ready for that. Turning to her left, she stepped into her bedroom. The door was missing, as was half the exterior wall; she could see clear down the street from where she stood.

The bed was in shambles. The mattress was gone entirely, and the frame itself had clasped to the floor. It didn't matter. She never wanted to sleep in that bed again. Turning away from it, she started opening the drawers of the dresser where she'd kept her clothes. Most of them were gone, or the fabric had rotted away. The only thing she could find to wear was a cream-colored dress made of a stiff linen; Nathan had always loved her in this dress, and just holding it in her hands bright another lump to her throat. But she had promised herself there would be no more tears until she found her son, so she swallowed her grief. Even though there was no one around, she moved into the relative privacy of the bathroom before stripping away that horrible vault suit. She sighed with relief as she felt the folds of fabric falling to her knees. It had no sleeves, but the weather hadn't yet grown cool. After some more searching, she found a worn, scuffed up pair of flats to cover her feet, and with that she took the vault suit and boots down to the river and threw the wretched things into the water.

After spending a few minutes watching the blue fabric flow downstream, she returned to her house and sat at the kitchen table, wondering what she should do next. Codsworth had suggested she search for Shaun in Concord, where there were supposedly other survivors. In her mind's eye, she remembered Concord as a quaint historical town; once she'd been to the historical museum there. She wasn't optimistic enough to think that it would be remotely the same a she remembered, but if there were other people who'd survived the war, maybe they could help her. Some kind of law enforcement perhaps, if such a thing still existed. If the world still had criminals capable of murder and kidnapping, surely there must be some kind of judicial system to balance the tables.

Comforted by this thought, she looked out the door toward the sky. It was still the middle of the day. She had plenty of time to walk the distance there.

"Well you be going now, mum?" Codsworth asked as she got to her feet.

"Yes," she said. "If there are survivors in Concord, maybe they saw who took Shaun."

"Very well, mum. I shall wait here for your return."

And humming to himself, he went outside the continue trimming the hedges.


End file.
